Unfolding the Mystery: Monastic Conferences on the Liturgical Year

Unfolding the Mystery: Monastic Conferences on the Liturgical Year

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DOM HUGH GILBERT, OSB. GRACEWING PRESS, 2007

This selection from conferences delivered originally to Abbot Hugh’s monastic “family” are of immense relevance to all Christian men and women looking for props to underpin their lives of faith in a society that does not understand their values. Readers will find fascinating glimpses of what it means to follow Christ as a Benedictine, will nourish the life of faith in the ancient monastic traditions, reflect on the place of Christian virtues in life, find comfort and strength in the wisdom of Scripture and the Fathers, and will relish the taste of the Liturgy of the Church and the Rule of St. Benedict.

The Liturgy is the summit and source of the Church’s life, said the Second Vatican Council, and the liturgy unfolds its riches within an annual pattern: the Church’s year. Here our life, lived in time, can meet and mingle with the life of Christ communicated in time. In Benedictine monasteries, the liturgical year shapes the whole life of the community. In these community conferences and homilies a Benedictine abbot shares with fellow-monks and fellow-Christians something of the wealth of the mystery of Christ as the liturgy unfolds it.

It is of immense satisfaction to those who have long appreciated Abbot Hugh’s work that he has so generously agreed to share his insights with a wider public. ‘In the course of the year,’ says Vatican II, ‘she - holy mother Church - unfolds the whole mystery of Christ from the incarnation and nativity to the ascension, to Pentecost and the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord.’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium 102)

‘Thanks to the Holy Spirit,’ writes Abbot Hugh, ‘the paschal mystery remains a present, operative reality in human history, a spring of living water, flowing out of the “paradise” of the liturgy and watering the desert of the human heart and human life. It is this which gives our liturgies, so often humanly poor (what else could they be?) their divine value.’ It is this unfolding of the mystery of Christ that the following conferences and homilies hope to serve in some small way.

168 pages.

"The living stones are the monks. Together they form a place in which the Spirit dwells. If in this place, as the Abbey’s motto proclaims, God gives peace, it is through their constant prayer, their glorious liturgy and the ennobling work."The role of the Abbot is crucial to this spiritual building, and in these beautiful conferences and instructions which Abbot Hugh has been persuaded to publish, we see the work of the master builder."Archbishop Mario Conti

"This is wisdom." Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown, Pax"Dom Hugh's book reaches some high moments of reflection." Downside Review"This is meat, at last!"Sisters of the Gospel of Life